


The Broken Queen

by Essie_Cat



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Book: Fire and Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Non-Chronological, The Dance of the Dragons | Aegon II Targaryen v. Rhaenyra Targaryen Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:35:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26685247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Essie_Cat/pseuds/Essie_Cat
Summary: May Aegon suffer for all he has wrought, all he has taken from her. May his broken body give him pain every day he has left to him. May he burn, as she does. May he die screaming.Rhaenyra Targaryen loses four sons and a daughter, a dragon, a husband and a crown.
Relationships: Daemon Targaryen/Rhaenyra Targaryen, Rhaenyra Targaryen & her children
Comments: 2
Kudos: 16





	The Broken Queen

**Author's Note:**

> This is a series of connected vignettes about Rhaenyra during the Dance, each one focusing on some sort of loss that she suffers. It's pretty different from the sort of stuff I usually write, but I had fun with it. Hope you enjoy!

Two Aegons watch her die. Her son, terrified. Her brother, triumphant.

‘Dear brother,’ the queen tells the usurper, playing at majesty. ‘I had hoped that you were dead.’

Missing for long enough that she had dared to think him gone forever. Fleeing the castle he had claimed, abandoning the throne he stole from her. And now, after all this time, he is _here._

This island is hers. It is her son’s by right. Aegon, Prince of Dragonstone, rightful heir to the Iron Throne.

_My love, I cannot save you._

‘After you,’ the usurper tells the queen. ‘You are the elder.’

Sunfyre the Golden, that proud and ruined beast, stirs at her brother’s command.

With her last breath, she screams curses into the flames. 

‘Aegon!’

May he suffer for all he has wrought, all he has taken from her. May his broken body give him pain every day he has left to him. May he burn, as she does. May he die screaming. 

*

From atop Maegor’s Holdfast, she stands witness as Syrax rains fire and blood upon the city. The yellow goddess who took her into the sky when she was seven years old. The faithless worm who threw her son to his death. The creature she is bound to, who shares what remains of her shattered soul. 

When her dragon falls, she _feels_ it. 

Physical, visceral, as if a part of her has been wrenched away, as if her chest were open and bleeding before her. She remembers her little girl who died inside her, the hole where her heart should have been, and her empty chest aches for them both.

‘Aegon,’ she murmurs. The boy gives a blank-eyed stare she has grown accustomed to, and grown to fear.

‘Come here, child, come to me,’ she whispers to him, as if he is ever far from her grasping hands these days. She pulls him even closer to her, brushes his silky hair from his eyes, silver-white like his father’s. ‘All of this will be yours one day. You will make such a fine king, my love. The finest there has ever been. The greatest Westeros has ever known.’

He says nothing as the city burns before them. He is quiet of late. He laughed once, she thinks; in her hazy memories, he remembers how to smile. 

‘All of them will burn,’ she tells him, breath hot and wet in his ear. A promise, a prayer. ‘We are not so easily defeated.’

Another dragon. She must have another. She must fly again, or all will be lost.

*

She did not see him leave her hall. She should have held him closer, clutched him tighter.

‘Go after him!’ she screams at anyone who will listen. The few who do slip away into the city, armed with swords and spears and grim duty to their queen. ‘Bring him back! Bring him back to me!’

A Targaryen on dragonback is as natural as a bird on the wing. But dragons are not horses. Joffrey, for all he loves the beasts more than any of his brothers had, trusts them too readily.

Syrax is hers. The beast has known no other rider, only the bitter queen and the bright girl she used to be. And the boy on her back is not his mother.

The queen watches as Joffrey begins to fall.

She imagines that Syrax will realise her mistake, will swoop down and catch him just in time. She imagines that both of them will return to her, land safely on Maegor’s Holdfast, her son running into her arms and her dragon teasing smoke from her nostrils. They will plead her pardon for their folly and, benevolent, she will grant them her forgiveness.

High above King’s Landing, Syrax rises and twists. 

Joff falls and falls and, somewhere beyond her sight, he breaks on the ground below.

_Laenor,_ she thinks. _Harwin. All of them have left me, just as you both did._

*

He loves her. She knows this. He wants her. She is his queen and his prize. He has always wanted her.

But Lady Misery speaks the truth, she who has known Prince Daemon in her bed a hundred times.

When Mysaria says that Daemon is fucking the bastard girl, the queen believes her.

She sits on her throne, twists the rings on her thick fingers. She imagines Daemon winning Nettles with honeyed words about her beauty and her valour, about the might of the ugly brown dragon she has claimed. Pulling her close in that possessive way he has, taking her roughly, making her scream with pleasure. An old man embarrassing himself for a slip of a girl.

‘My husband is bewitched,’ the queen says. ‘The girl has the stink of sorcery upon her.’

She orders the letter sent to Maidenpool. She will have the traitor dead and her husband at her side where he belongs. They will take to the skies together, just as they used to in easier, softer days. The Blood Wyrm almost playful as he swoops around Syrax, the King of the Stepstones almost tender in the hands of his wilful princess.

She needs him. She needs his guidance and his strength and the loyalty he inspires in others. She needs Dark Sister and Caraxes. She needs his firm hand to guide her sons into manhood.

He loves her. When the witch is dead, he will return.

*

Jace would have made a fine king, the greatest Westeros had ever known. Weak men and fools and tyrants have sat the throne, and her son was wise and good and honourable.

The men tell her how bravely he fought and died, as though that were any comfort.

They try to keep the details from her. How Jace leapt free of his dying dragon and clung to the smoking wreckage of the ships below, how the Myrish bastards shot him full of arrows like game in the woods, how his body slipped into the dark sea where no man could recover him.

‘Mother.’

Joff stands before her, and she would pull him close, hold him tight, but she does not because he would not thank her for it. She does not because he is the Prince of Dragonstone, heir to the Iron Throne, and the world must treat him as such.

‘I will serve you with honour, Mother,’ he tells her, true and earnest. 

At two-and-ten, her son promises her, ‘I will kill them all for what they have done to us.’

Joffrey is a good boy, sweet and clever and brave. He thinks he is a man grown and ready to right all the wrongs the world has thrown at them. But Joff is not Jace. He will be a great king when his day comes, but that is not this day.

‘I know you will, my love,’ she says. She will take King’s Landing, and she will take her throne. Her sons will not have died for nothing. ‘We will win this war together.’

*

When they learn the ship is captured, she screams at Jace for it. Jace thought to send his brothers away, send them to Pentos where they would be safe, and now Viserys is lost to them.

She regrets this, later, for the cruelty of her words. For the look in his eyes as she vents her grief at him, the disappointment she sees there.

Jacaerys is a man grown, Prince of Dragonstone, heir to the Iron Throne.

She is his queen but she is his mother too, and perhaps he will always see that as a weakness.

But this tragedy proves it. She must keep them close, all her precious sons. She must not let them leave her.

‘We’ll bring him back,’ Jace says to her and to all of them, the men who follow him now. He will lead men and dragons to the Gullet and burn the Myrish ships and save his little brother, while his mother weeps on Dragonstone.

Aegon weeps too, blames himself for his lost brother and his slain dragon.

‘This was not your doing,’ she tells him, when she can bear to speak at all. She takes hold of Aegon’s chin, jerks his head up so he will look her in the eye. ‘You came back to me. Do not regret that. Do not apologise. None of this is your fault. We will bring him home, and all of us will be together again.’

*

The floor is hard stone. Cold, rough. On her hands and knees, she wheezes for air. 

_Luke._

‘My queen,’ comes a voice. Hands on her shoulders, trying to help her stand.

He was too young. She had told them all he was too young. He had sworn on the Seven-Pointed Star that he would be an envoy only. That he would not risk himself with pointless bloodshed, for some inflated sense of honour.

_I should have protected him._

She had given him the easier road. Storm’s End owed her their allegiance. He was supposed to be safe.

_I cannot go back, now._

The hands on her are more insistent. She is vaguely aware of footsteps, of more bodies crowding around her. 

‘Her Majesty is unwell – help her up – help the queen inside –’

_An eye for an eye,_ Daemon writes in his letter, and she can imagine the words on his lips, spitting like dragonfire. _A son for a son. Lucerys will be avenged._

Her brother the usurper. Aemond the Kinslayer. Borros Baratheon. Every man who has ever sneered at her, every man who has named her sons a bastard.

Let them suffer. Let them bleed as she does.

Let them burn.

*

‘Monster!’

The terrible news brings on the birth, as if the child inside her, feeling her anguish, howls along with her. Fighting its way out into the air, clawing at her insides with ragged little nails. 

With Aegon and Viserys, Daemon had stayed with her – across the room, arms folded over his chest, observing the scene with something like contempt. With Jace, Luke and Joff, she had Harwin, reassuring in his familiar silence, and sweet Laenor with his soft words and gentle encouragement. 

Now, she is alone save for a septa and her faithful maester, as her husband prepares for war. 

Her body screams and Rhaenyra screams with it.

‘Monster, monster!’ 

She thinks of Aegon on her throne, Alicent preening at his feet. Little Helaena with a queen’s crown, Aemond and Daeron doing obeisance before their brother. Daeron’s charming smiles, Aemond’s shining eye.

‘Get out! Get _out!’_

After three days, she sees the babe’s twisted body, the prize she has laboured for. No cry, no heart, no breath. She weeps and she rages as they take the girl away. 

When Daemon and the rest crowd around her bed, she accepts them blankly. Like ghosts, they fade around her. Their eyes are full of disgust, and pity, and resolution. She wants to sleep. She wants to fly.

‘My queen,’ her husband says.

‘Visenya,’ she tells him, through the sweet haze that milk of the poppy grants her. ‘They took her from me. She was my only daughter and they murdered her.’ 

‘Rhaenyra,’ Daemon says, gentle, demanding, his hand on Dark Sister at his hip.

‘I will avenge her,’ the queen swears, fingers writhing into the blankets. They have brought her clean ones, but she feels the blood as if it were still fresh. ‘I will avenge her death. And I will take my throne.’


End file.
